Sample Phonics Lesson

I posted a while back that the big girl had asked to have more formal lessons. She wants to learn to read and needs some help.

We bought Hooked on Phonics a year or so ago because it was a curriculum that worked well with her big brother. Just as an aside, he was schooled in public schools during elementary and middle school years and didn't learn to read until I taught him at home with Hooked on Phonics back in 1996. That was one reason we decided years later to unschool at home with the girls. We had seen how very little the boy learned in the classroom and how much, much more he actually learned at home and out in the world.

So...here's a brief look at how we're approaching phonics now. I have purchased some subscriptions to online resources, but I'm going to show you the free resources we use in case you aren't ready to invest much in lesson materials.

We use two different sites to hear the letter sounds:

Starfall

and

Readinglessons.com

Both sites have more than just the lesson sound, but we start our lesson by listening to the sounds and practicing the sound.

Then we move on to making a letter book. For this we use the downloads at

First-school

They're fun little books that have a page for tracing and writing the letter, pages with words and images of items that start with the featured letter, and space to write those words. They're a bit beyond the baby girl, but she enjoys the books once I assemble them. The big girl loves the cutting and pasting involved in making the books as much as she enjoys practicing the letter writing.



Then we move on to practicing writing the letter. There are many online sources for handwriting sheets. Some of our favorites are:

First-school

Readinglessons.com

DLTK



We'll use the songs found over at Readinglessons.com

and the girls also like the letter cards found there. I'll print them out in color on cardstock and then cover them with clear contact paper to make them more durable.



Next we'll do a craft related to the letter of the day. These I find all over the place. No Time for Flash Cards has great ideas as does DLTK

and we wrap it up by reading books featuring the letter of the day. Most of our books were downloaded from subscription sites like Reading A-Z and edHelper.com

I also want to mention that many days we don't do all of this at one block of time. It will often be spread out throughout the day and the reading might even happen in the evenings.